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Raising 5.4M, Reading Rainbow wants a full-time FCPX editor for 25K/year
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[John Davidson] “Something tells me that porn company isn’t terribly concerned about withholding taxes for their freelancers.”
We have a goodly number of porn editors represented at Creative COW, who understandably don’t talk about their work. Those companies are typically straight legit, because they come under extra scrutiny, for everything from AIDS to OSHA to RICO to taxes.
Not that plenty of them don’t try to cut corners on post using low budgets as the excuse, but the reports I’ve gotten don’t indicate that this is any different than anywhere else.
(Also worth noting: one of the first sectors to broadly adopt Media 100 was porn. I’d guess in the early days, very nearly 100% of the Media 100 users in Orange County were working in porn. Media 100’s customer base quickly expanded of course, but porn plays an important role for media creation no less than it does media consumption.)
[John Davidson] “By my estimation it pays about 30k more than most craigslist jobs.”
I was going to ask about this. Doesn’t craigslist imply little-to-no pay? Do any jobs with appropriate salaries get posted there? I don’t know because I’ve never looked, but the threads in the COW lamenting ridiculously low pay for editors whose experience warrants much more are almost exclusively from craigslist.
A question for the LA crowd in particular, is “non-union” a red flag for you? Again, I don’t know, and I’m certainly not asking anything broad about unions. I’m just asking in the context of, do non-union jobs tend to pay this much less.
Certainly no complaints about benefits though, and nice to have them included rather than as part of union dues…but if union dues secure higher-paying jobs….?
So, asking broadly, what do you see as the relationship between craigslist, non-union and union jobs? Is there any, or can we just summarize as “craigslist offers are miserable” and leave it at that?
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Craigs is for amateurs, in the original sense of the word: those who do something for the love of doing it, not for profit. Craigs is for undergrads, hobbyists, independents with absolutely no money, and fans and aficionados, who want to work on something low-end. Plus sketchy and odd folks of no particular alignment.
Couldn’t Raise Any Income; Gonna Starve.
I’m going to have to recuse myself from talking about unions for a while, though my take on them is nothing but positive.
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Too bad the ad was pulled: the requirements should have also had:
-Can ascend to double the altitude of most lepidoptra
-Can do anything
-Can go anywhere -
[Tim Wilson] “A question for the LA crowd in particular, is “non-union” a red flag for you? Again, I don’t know, and I’m certainly not asking anything broad about unions. I’m just asking in the context of, do non-union jobs tend to pay this much less.”
If non-union was a red flag for me I’d be in real trouble because I am not in the union. 😉 For editing, I think pay has to do more with the show budget and genre than it does with union status. For example, Reality TV work is almost all nonunion and it can pay very, very well. Union jobs will have a higher pay floor, but both union and non-union jobs can pay well. From what I can tell the biggest benefit to union gigs are things like the health insurance and more regulated hours (i.e. no unpaid OT).
[Tim Wilson] ” Is there any, or can we just summarize as “craigslist offers are miserable” and leave it at that?”
Pretty much this, though occasionally you do see decent jobs (usually because the employer is trying to cast as broad a net as possible).
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[Andrew Kimery] “Pretty much this, though occasionally you do see decent jobs (usually because the employer is trying to cast as broad a net as possible).”
Yeah, I’ve gotten both some really good gigs from Craigslist, as well as seeing those from people wanting a Red Dragon with a full Arri lighting package and sound gear for $150 a day.
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[John Davidson] “No it’s not a great job if you’re a freelancer who just edited a series for broadcast television with 20 years of experience. If you’re 23 and have a few roommates, you could do worse. By my estimation it pays about 30k more than most craigslist jobs.”
Call me cynical, but I bet they don’t go with someone who shows promise and needs experience, but instead with someone who has loads of experience and is desperate for anything.
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I did it occasionally on a fill in basis and I think I got $300 for 8.
Tim
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Just out of college I traveled a few hours to interview for a gig at a small town TV news station. 1993. They said stuff like fast paced and deadline driven. They made me take a sort of creative writing test as I’d likely have write, edit and produce small news stories. 16,000yr. BUT, they said the cost of living was low!
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[Bret Williams] “They made me take a sort of creative writing test”
Seems ballsy when you’re offering 16k (25k now adjusted).
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Round here freelance is definitely synonymous with independent contractor. I’ve never heard of taxes being withheld for a freelancer and honestly it’d tick me off. You have to be an employee to have taxes withheld. If you’re freelance you don’t know where your next gig is coming from and being liquid is more important than withholding taxes. I see no reason to give the U.S. government an interest free loan of MY money before there has been any determination that I owe them a dime.
I have seen a few companies require that their freelancers work through an agency. Usually these are companies that got in legal trouble for treating contractors as employees. They’d give them a desk, and have them come in at 9 for whatever work they had for them. The only difference between them and employees is they would track their hours for different projects and invoicing. Now they make them go through an agency of which they are a temp employee. They can opt in to crappy benefits through the agency. But this sort of thing isn’t the norm at all. And we call freelancers that are pretty much showing up every day perma-lancers. Still contractors.
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